Thread: Honing new razor

I had bought for me a Dovo razor and I am wondering when I come to touch it up on the coticule if I put a piece of tape on the spine to protect the gold wash won't it alter the angle of the bevel on the edge?
Thanks.

This has been discussed many times. I tend not to use tape, but I really only ever do refreshes on my razors and I have none with gold wash on the spine.

It has been proven that the difference in geometry is so small that it really won't make a difference to your shave, or at least not for many years. The range of angles that work is relatively large compared to how you alter the geometry with a single layer of tape.

GSSixgun has a good video on this on YouTube called tape vs no tape (at least I think that's what it's called).

If I were you I would go ahead and protect the gold wash and providing you are not going crazy on the stones the razor will still be in good order long after we have all gone.

There is countless threads on bevel angles when using tape but in a nutshell, one layer of tape will not make a difference.
If your dovo was originally honed without tape using one layer of tape and a few finishing laps will create a micro bevel. IIRC razor maker Tim Zowada uses micro bevels on his razors, I have used them too with great effect.

I agree with Porl.
As long as you are just touching it up on the coticule, water only, no slurry. You won't mess up the geometry at all

Oops guilty of not using search feature sorry.
Thanks to everyone for the quick replies,I'll only be touching it up so happy to put tape on now and protect the gold wash.Thanks again.

Hi oddball,

as far as I know the very first time a razor need to touch a hone you might need to completely „set the bevel“. I‘ve read this somewhere and it did definitely applied to my one-and-only new pirchased razor (the rest of my small collection is vintage stuff).
Bevel setting does require coniderably more effort then just touching up a getting dulled edge on a razor with the bevel is already set.

Good news: your Coticule is probably capable for bevel setting. You can find lot of stuff about using a coti here or on coticule.be. The merhods of using the only coti for bevel setting throughout the refinement up to the finishing are known as „dilucot“ (i guess it cones from „dilution“ and „coticule“) and „unicot“ (not sure about the abbreviation here).

But maybe the touching-up procedure will just go dine wirh your blade.

Regards
Philipp